Excerpt from The Wafer:

As he closed the curtains and reached toward a lamp, the same muted sound of a speeding car swished down the street and she said, "Please don't turn the light on for a moment." And she collapsed on the couch. In the dim light she appeared to loom into a new depth of reality. Her shocked exhaustion enfeebled her like the spent flight of a defenseless creature rescued from a rapacious stalker. She covered her face with both palms and her bobbed black hair fell over her hands. She said, "Oh God ... I was so terrified I thought my heart would burst."

He crossed the room and stood looking down at her, thinking, and not knowing what to say or to do. He asked, "Would you like wine, or a cocktail?"

"No, not just yet, but water; I could drink a gallon of water.”

He returned from the refrigerator with pitcher and glass, and she drank while he waited, watching, wanting to help. Uneasily, he said, "I will start dinner in a few minutes. When you feel up to it, come sit at the breakfast bar while I work."

"Okay. But right now I want to enjoy this moment of being alive and free. Thank God you recognized my predicament."

"Just followed my impulses. You can tell me about it when ready." He had known when he saw the pall of fatigue and exhaustion overcoming the agile leaps.

"After I catch my breath and rest." He hesitated; then sat on the edge of the couch beside her. She nestled back, rested her head on a pillow, and closed her eyes.

He half turned and watched. The last few minutes were difficult to believe, this beautiful woman suddenly there, like a dream still dreaming - an alabaster beauty, a regal and delicate woman of uncommon loveliness. Yet he sensed a robustness and strength hidden behind a beguiling litheness. Everything seemed very right.

She drifted into sleep, twitched, cried out, and awakened briefly, then drifted back into sleep. Drowsy himself from forty hours on duty without sleep, and sweaty and muggy, he needed bath, food, and bed. He eased off the couch and went to the shower.

When he reentered the room she aroused and looked up in surprise, recovered her bearings, and moved to rise. He snapped on a lamp and reached for her hand, and pulled her up. He guided her by an elbow to a barstool then crossed into the kitchenette and began dinner preparations.

"You've bathed while I was sleeping. I like your leisure suit."

"Yes. Feel free to do the same. Pick what you like from clothes in the bedroom ... first door on the right."

"Thanks. I will directly, but I could use wine now. May I pour for you, too?"

"Chardonnay and champagne in the refrigerator, glasses above the sink. You choose."

She poured champagne. They clinked rims, and she said, "Here's to being alive."

"And to staying alive."

"By all means."

"Do you think, by any chance, the people pursuing you might be trying to steal the organs you carry?"

"Perhaps, but there is more to it. They could grab the container and run but they don't. And this afternoon I had already completed a mission when they began chasing me."

"Who could they be and what do they want?"

"I don't know, and I can only run."

"Your job?"

"The job can wait. It will have to."

"You work for Marcus Mann?"

"Yes. You know him?"

"I do. No one is more respected in the community for the quality and the readiness of his banked tissue, and his handling of live organs from the brain dead."

"The community, the country, the whole world."

"The country? The world?"

"Oh, yes! He founded LifeChain, one of the largest tissue and organ distributors in the world, and he has grown with the transplant era, a pioneer working to perfect the science of tissue and organ salvage."

"Well, I know what he does to help us get organs here, but I never stopped to think he might be doing the same for others elsewhere."

"Known the world over for it - the most giving person I have ever known, almost totally altruistic."

"Does he know you are in danger, for whatever reason?"

"He knows something is amiss. During the past two months, each of the other ten regions of UNOS has lost at least one courier. They disappeared while making runs with live organs. Ours, number eleven, is the only one not to lose a courier yet. But it's beginning to look like open war on the national system and I'm afraid our luck will run out. So far, the media is paying scant attention. As to Mann's concerns about me, he knows I feel harassed."

"I've heard rumors of trouble with the couriers, but apparently it's being hushed up. Something seems to be happening behind the scenes."

"Oh, yes. I suspect there is a spy in the LifeChain system selling information."

"What information?"

"Two avenues of deception - one would be the identity of potential donors with the right qualifications, such as blood type and body build, to fit the specific needs of a dying patient waiting for a heart or another organ."

"And the result?"

"The right person could be kidnapped, rendered brain dead, and used as a donor by the purchaser."

"Betraying well-intentioned people who have agreed to donate at the moment of some distant and unlikely personal tragedy, a tragedy they don't actually believe will ever happen."

"Oh, indeed, and who never suspect lurking deception." "Well, the time is certainly ripe for something of the sort."

"Meaning what?"

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